The VM Transport

The VM transport allows clients to connect to each other inside the VM without the overhead of the network communication. The connection used is not a socket connection but use direct method invocations which enables a high performance embedded messaging system.

The first client to use the VM connection will boot an embedded broker. Subsequent connections will attach that the same broker. Once all VM connections to the broker have been closed, the embedded broker will automatically shutdown.

Simple Broker Configuration Syntax

This is the normal syntax for a VM connection. It's simple, but provides only a limited amount of configuration of the embedded broker.

vm://brokerName?transportOptions

Transport Options

Example URI

vm://broker1?marshal=false&broker.persistent=false

Be careful with embedded brokers If you are using the VM transport and wish to explicitly configure an Embedded Broker there is a chance that you could create the JMS connections first before the broker starts up. Currently ActiveMQ will auto-create a broker if you use the VM transport and there is not one already configured. (In 5.2 it is possible to use the waitForStart and create=false options for the connection uri) So to work around this if you are using Spring you may wish to use the depends-on attribute so that your JMS ConnectionFactory depends on the embedded broker to avoid this happening. e.g. <bean id="broker" class="org.apache.activemq.xbean.BrokerFactoryBean"> <property name="config" value="classpath:org/apache/activemq/xbean/activemq.xml" /> <property name="start" value="true" /> </bean> <bean id="connectionFactory" class="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory" depends-on="broker"> <property name="brokerURL" value="vm://localhost"/> </bean>

Advanced Broker Configuration Syntax

This is the advanced syntax for a VM connection. It's allows you configure the broker more extensively using a Broker Configuration URI.

vm:(broker:(tcp://localhost)?brokerOptions)?transportOptions
or
vm:broker:(tcp://localhost)?brokerOptions

Transport Options

There are more options on optimising the use of the VM transport.

Example URI

vm:(broker:(tcp://localhost:6000)?persistent=false)?marshal=false

Configuring an Embedded Broker Using an External Config File

 To start an embedded broker using the vm transport and configure it using an external configuration file (i.e. activemq.xml), use the following URI:

 vm://localhost?brokerConfig=xbean:activemq.xml